Symphony Center

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis – Orchestra Hall at Symphony Center – April 27, 2024

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In the week that Foxtrot’s convenience stores closed, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra opened the concert with John Adams’s The Chairman Dances (Foxtrot for Orchestra). As with everything that followed, it was a hit.

Then it was on to Shostakovich’s Suite for Variety Orchestra No. 1, arranged by Atovmyan in eight movements, which challenged the time-worn, or is it worn-out, tradition of saving applause until the end of the piece.

It wasn’t always so according to a nice little article I found with some history and differences of opinion on the topic.

In any event, a sizable portion of the audience could not restrain themselves, perhaps because they were attracted to the event by the appearance of Wynton Marsalis and the jazz orchestra. No such tradition at jazz concerts.

It even became interactive, and funny, when some in the audience started clapping during a moment of silence before the ending to one of the movements. The conductor, Giancarlo Guerrero, acknowledged the faux pas, and, when the movement really ended, turned to the audience with a nod and then back to the musicians for a look of appreciation for not missing a beat.

After intermission the jazz orchestra joined the CSO on stage, bringing the head count to about 573, or maybe not quite that many, but it was so crowded that some of the violinists had to sit at the kid’s table.

The guests played Duke Ellington’s Mooche, not to be confused with Cab Calloway’s Minnie the Moocher.

Then the groups, with their own distinct stylistic arrangements, separately took on Prokofiev’s Selections from Romeo and Juliet, alternating between the eight movements (each one followed by applause), before finishing together with Marsalis’s All American Pep from Swing Symphony. Something for everyone.

Chicago Symphony Orchestra – Symphony Center – October 24, 2023

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What a great program, starting with Barber’s The School for Scandal Overture, followed by a short break to raise the grand piano to center stage from below, which for some reason I always get a kick out of. I wouldn’t mind them bringing the whole orchestra up from below, maybe with the aid of a fog machine.

We were then treated to Conrad Tao playing Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F, which reminded me of Michelle Cann’s rendition of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue I saw a few months ago in the way that the music seems to enliven the musician. I kept envisioning a Tao bobblehead giveaway day, but the CSO failed me in that regard.

Tao started choking up before his encore when telling the audience how much he appreciated their applause, having grown up going to concerts at Symphony Center. He then favored us with his transcription of the 1953 (as opposed to 1939) Art Tatum recording of Somewhere Over the Rainbow. I love Tatum and Tao did him justice.

After all that, we were just getting started, coming back after intermission with Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, complete with finger snapping, and ending with Sensemaya by Silvestre Revueltas, an enjoyable piece that was new to me.

Bugs Bunny at the Symphony (30th Anniversary Edition) – Symphony Center – January 18, 2020

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In this, the 80th anniversary of Bugs Bunny’s debut in The Wild Hare, this program of classic cartoons being accompanied live by the Warner Bros. Symphony Orchestra listed Bugs, Elmer Fudd, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Wile E. Coyote, Road Runner, Michigan J. Frog, and Giovanni Jones as starring. I was glad to see that there wasn’t an insert telling me that an understudy would be filling in for any of them. I would have been disappointed at seeing Donald, rather than Daffy, playing the role of the duck.

I also was glad to see that I wasn’t the only adult in the audience unaccompanied by a child. I wasn’t counting my inner child, as it didn’t need its own seat.

The program also told me that Max Steiner composed the Warner Bros. Fanfare. Steiner was a man of many firsts in regard to scoring movies, including the use of click tracks, which the musicians at the Symphony Center were listening to on headphones, which were not merely acting as earmuffs, as I originally contemplated given the cold temperatures outside.

Steiner was a major influence for John Williams, whom, I will gratuitously mention, was played by the son of a friend of mine on the Apple Podcast, Blockbuster, which tells the story of the early directing days of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, and which led me to research further and come to believe that Lucas’s film editor and wife of the time, Marcia, who won the Oscar for Best Film Editing (one more Oscar than George has ever won) was probably the real force behind the success of the original Star Wars.

Speaking of directors, the great Chuck Jones, the animation director of about half the cartoons shown at Symphony Center, was represented by his grandson and great granddaughter, who, on behalf of the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity, presented the Symphony Center with an original drawing by Jones of Bugs as conductor. There’s no Oscar for best animation director, but there should be given how difficult it must be to deal with temperamental cartoon characters, like Yosemite Sam.

What’s Opera, Doc?, an operatic performance even I can get behind, was greeted with cheers from the audience as conductor, and co-creator of these concerts, George Daugherty informed us that we would be hearing eight Wagner operas in the space of six minutes and four seconds, rather than 30-40 hours.

The audience also was treated to three new Road Runner shorts and the world concert premiere of Dynamite Dance, a new cartoon, based on The Dance of the Hours, created for Bugs’s 80th birthday.

Fittingly, at the end of the performance, Daugherty was presented with a bouquet of carrots.

That’s All Folks.